Chapter 24: Party Number Two
The thing about the Prajapati party was that it would have everyone who was anyone in the pyramid of information in the city. The people who made and broke every opinion when it came to anything that affected the culture of the nation. If there was something one had to know about what was ailing or glorifying any side of a story, you would find it at Prajapati’s party. Editorialised and garnished with generous helpings of insider facts, fictions and fuckups. Obviously, Delhi disagreed but then this story isn’t set in Delhi.
Not many people know but Vinay and Neeru were the couple responsible for the concept of a “selling face” — which revolutionised the concept of signing up brand ambassadors. Products stopped needing their brand ambassadors to be good looking. They could be actors, models, sportspeople, anybody influential — as long as the ad agency finalised the one smile they wanted to use as a design element to sell their stuff. Nobody except the agency chief had noticed this sly little writer-designer team (both fresh out of college) slipping in pictures of only one kind of smile with all their copy to show as options to the team lead. Soon enough, all the other agencies caught on.
If you were at the Prajapati party there was a good chance what you had said, written or made was a point of conversation in some part of the city, the country or at least a social media post. This wasn’t just to do with news. There would be B-list filmmakers, like that guy who made that film which lasted for a week in the movie halls at about fourteen shows a week and then moved to the morning shows. Or that girl who made that film about real people and their wit that saved them from a threat they never saw coming.
There would be writers, like Anuj, who poured their hearts out in search of (readers and) the perfect way to tell the story of the human condition. There was the writer who only wrote stories of separation and longing. All his characters were far from what (or who) they wanted and they spent their days longing for that what or who while screwing up their lives. Then there was the writer who only wrote in allegories starring characters of mythical origins from another universe or dimension and were working hard to fit into this one. There were poets who found themselves lost ever since blogging had gotten popular.
At this party, there were photographers who would have graced the covers of magazines with their work and made a fortune taking pictures. Like the one who was the first to give his subjects out-of-the-box props — the most iconic of which was a broom. You would remember the picture of this superstar holding a broom like he was a peacock and the split wide open broom was his plumage.
There would be artists and designers who affected one’s everyday conversations. Like the shot glasses which had a red lipstick mark painted around their edges. Like the salt and pepper shakers that everybody thought were a must-buy. Like the label that changed how people wore kurtas in certain circles forever. There would also be the advertisers who made sure that you were wearing the shampoo or deodorant or fairness cream or cellphone that they were paid to make look like it was one’s last hope to get laid.
The party also had journalists who knew which politician or industrialist was being a lump in the country’s carpet. There would be people from the “software” industry as well but these wouldn’t be your average friendly neighbourhood IT slaves. These were people who made apps, for social media, for phones, for other apps, and so on. There would be a few Americans, a few Brits and a few French expats, most of whom would be working on their big India book while being creative consultants elsewhere. Every room at the Prajapati house would also have its own token Pakistani, who had come via London or Canada or some other such country.
There would be about five guys common between Vishal’s party and this one, mostly because their girlfriends were working somewhere or with something to do with the media. They were still at Vishal’s party though.
There would be a room reserved for Poker. No Limits Texas Hold ’em. Lowest bet fifty rupees. That kept the average drunk noob out of play. Chips would be thrown, like coins at a deity, at a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black sitting at the centre of the carpet everyone would be sitting on. Between the winner cleaning the centre and the next game being dealt, empty glasses would be refilled. Except for once when before the river card, one of the last two players in a game would need a really stiff drink. The pot in that game had (give or take a few hundreds) eighty seven thousand rupees.
And there would be dancing. Like full Bombay masala style dancing except there would be no bhangra. As Seher had written in her piece when SRK and Shriya Saran were on stage, inaugurating one of the IPL series: “Koota, with a soft t, is the new Bhangra.” The dancing would only take place in rooms where the walls had balloons. This was a rule the Prajapatis had to make a couple of years ago after the downstairs neighbour’s fan had collapsed when people had jumped up and down all over the house. (Niyati had started the ‘Do a shot and hop thrice’ wave that year.)
Of course, there would be alcohol. Most of the people would have brought their own and the others would have to make do with lesser brands, which the hosts had stocked up on. There was one thing that this community knew better than most others: After four large drinks, the only time you would know how good the booze was was on the morning after. There would be people who would guzzle wine, some of whom would know more about wine than whether it was red or white, and which ensured lesser calories or lesser hangovers.
Anand pulled the car over near the gate of Prajapati’s building. Anuj and Avantika got out the back. Kartik, the zombie, did not open his side of the car as he stretched his hands forward and followed Seher out of hers. “Brrraaiinns…” He waited by the side of the road and waited for Veena to kiss Anand and get out. He joined Anand in the front of the car to give him company in finding a parking spot. The entire lane was filled with cars. “Braaiiinnns!” He shouted when he noticed an empty spot further ahead in the same lane.
There were four parties that Anand and the zombie could hear from the road. On their walk back after parking the car, they heard a high pitch scream come from one of the balconies. They looked up to see a few girls and guys doing shots at the window of a house as a guy tickled a girl and colourful lights flashed from behind them. Kartik wavered in his path as he started moving towards that noise saying, “Braaaiins.”
— “Dude, you can’t leave tonight. You have to stay.” Anand grabbed him by his stretched-forward arm to pull him back on the path to Prajapati’s building.
— “Brains!” Kartik shrugged as he stumbled along the tar road filled with potholes. “Brains?”
— “I was banking on your meeting with Anjali to go better than it did but as long as you show up with a smile on your face, we are good.”
— “Brains, dude. Brains. Brains.” The second ‘brains’ was more resolute than the first one. The third one was decisive.
Kartik was too stuck in his internalised world to say anything to Anand or to see through his plans. Usually, Kartik was the first to see through any long con Anand was pulling to prove a point. He never really said anything except winked at Anand when he spotted the right vantage point⁵⁵.
The building they were walking to was an old Bandra apartment complex with peeling paint on the outside. The interiors visible from the open windows and the curtains in the rest were in stark contrast with the exteriors — new, avant garde and beautiful. Anand showed Kartik a cigarette and Kartik responded with, “Brains.” Anand put the cigarette to Kartik’s mouth. His lips held onto it and Anand lit it. Kartik took a deep drag and then just let the smoke out his nostrils and mouth instead of exhaling it in a steady stream.
— “So that’s how zombies exhale?” Anand laughed.
— “Brains.” With that both Anand and Kartik established the tone of ‘yes’ for Kartik’s zombie state.
— “All good?”
— “Brains.” In the same tone.
— “Should we head to the party?”
— “Brains.”
— “You’re not going to run away?”
— “Brains?” Kartik shrugged to show that he did not really have a choice.
— “Good.”
A large board, hung over a white-washed wall, had wooden strips with names (Vinay and Neeru) painted over it in white. The building’s elevator wasn’t working because on some floor of the building, a drunk party-goer had forgotten to shut the grill properly. One could hear the scratchy digital recording of a lady ordering you to ‘please close the door’ in three languages — English, Hindi and Marathi. The gang took the stairs. By the time they reached the second floor, Kartik dropped the cigarette he was bogharting. He broke into a coughing fit, stamped the cigarette and continued climbing up. By the time they reached the fourth floor, only Avantika, Anand and Veena were not out of breath.
— “What time do you plan to die?” Anand asked Anuj when they reached Prajapati’s door.
— “I’m not sure, man. I don’t think this crowd will buy it.” Anuj’s problem was not that people wouldn’t buy it. Anuj’s bigger problem was that there were women there who he knew he wanted to sleep with, women who he knew wanted to sleep with him, people he had worked with, people he would work with in the future and more.
— “The more brain-dead he stays, the better it is.” Anand intercepted the joint Avantika was passing to Kartik before turning to Anuj again. “What do you mean you are not sure?”
— “What do you mean you are not sure?” Avantika asked the question at the same time as Anand. “You are not bailing on me. If I have to use all the melodrama that I have prepared myself for, I will need you to die.” She held Anuj’s hand just about as tight as she thought lovers who were about to commit suicide by jumping off a tall building would. Too bad that in that metaphor, her love was unrequited. “According to Actorography, if one doesn’t use all these energies trapped inside one’s body when preparing for an emotion, there is a good chance that one will implode.”
— “Fine, fine… We’ll figure something out. Although, did Niyati really use the word ‘implode’ when explaining this to you?” Anuj’s commitment to his depression had begun to wane. He had started to think of consequences. If he ended up making a fool of himself, he knew nobody was ever going to let him forget that. Not because they cared but because he had a habit of acting up like a sore toe in the middle of working with these people or even sleeping with them for that matter. If anybody from the gang ever confronted him, he’d just shrug and blame it all on his inner, repressed Bengali⁵⁶.
While this was happening right outside the door, Seher was busy tweeting to everybody who had been tweeting from the Prajapati party, to let them know she was going to be there in a few. A few because when she would actually make it in two as opposed to a few, it would be the opposite of fashionably late.
Meanwhile, Veena was unable to concentrate on what everyone was saying or doing. Her mind kept zoning off to the recorded voice of the bored woman asking somebody to please close the door. By the time Anuj’s dying drama got sorted and Seher was about to hit the doorbell, Veena asked her to hold on. She darted one floor up the stairs.
Anand followed her halfway up as he watched her slam the grill shut. The bored woman stopped yammering and the elevator made the sound of a single amplified heartbeat before it started moving downwards. Veena walked back down with the relieved smile of someone who had been holding her pee for too long and had finally found a bathroom.
— “What? I had to go do that, else all through the party I would’ve kept hearing that lady’s voice asking me to shut the door.”
— “You won’t be able to hear anything once we’re inside.” Avantika laughed.
— “In my head, you dumbass!”
— “Will somebody ring the doorbell?” Seher shook her head as she put her phone away for the second time.
⁵⁵ According to Actorography, every conversation has a vantage point. A point from which you can enter the exchange whenever you please. Veena was rarely at a vantage point. Seher and Anuj worked hard but sometimes the vantage point gave them a slip. Seher did better than Anuj. Kartik’s superpower was that he could find a vantage point whenever he needed one. Anand had two exclusively different vantage points, one reserved for Veena and the other for the rest.
⁵⁶ When the words repressed Bengali are used, they are an understatement. His father was a well-respected Trotskyist ideologue in Calcutta who wrote and edited academic books, papers and articles and his mother was an acclaimed singer who had given her life to the interpretation of the works of Kabir using a do-tara. In fact, it had been his mother who had insisted that he get out of the house for the New Year’s Eve. She believed living was for the young. His father believed otherwise.
